DEREK ACHONG

A phar­ma­cist from San Fer­nan­do has agreed to with­draw his case over his pro­vi­sion­al firearm user’s li­cence (FUL) which was re­voked be­fore he re­ceived it as it pur­port­ed­ly had a forged sig­na­ture of for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith.

The man, whose name was with­held due to per­son­al safe­ty con­cerns, was grant­ed leave to pur­sue a ju­di­cial re­view law­suit against cur­rent Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher in Feb­ru­ary.

How­ev­er, he agreed to dis­con­tin­ue it ear­li­er this week af­ter she promised to give a fi­nal de­ci­sion on his FUL on or be­fore Sep­tem­ber 20.

The T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) al­so agreed to pay the $11,500 in le­gal costs in­curred by the man in pur­su­ing his case.

Ac­cord­ing to his court fil­ings, ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, the busi­ness­man ap­plied for the FUL be­fore Grif­fith’s three-year term end­ed in 2021.

Af­ter par­tic­i­pat­ing in the in­ves­tiga­tive process, the man was in­formed by of­fi­cers of the Oropouche Po­lice Sta­tion that his pro­vi­sion­al FUL had been ap­proved and he was giv­en a ref­er­ence num­ber.

How­ev­er, when he con­tact­ed of­fi­cials from the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) Firearms Unit, he was told that his ap­pli­ca­tion was await­ing the ap­proval of the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er.

In March, last year, the man made a re­quest un­der the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act (FOIA) for a copy of his file and a copy of the pro­vi­sion­al FUL that the of­fi­cers pre­vi­ous­ly claimed was ap­proved.

The re­quest was de­nied with the TTPS rais­ing the is­sue with the doc­u­ment and in­di­cat­ing that it was be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed.

“We are fur­ther in­struct­ed that this Pro­vi­sion­al Li­cence may be a fraud­u­lent doc­u­ment as the sig­na­ture of the for­mer Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice ap­pears to have been forged and the date of the sig­na­ture has been called in­to ques­tion, as the ap­proval ap­pears to have been made when the said Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice was no longer hold­ing of­fice,” the TTPS’ des­ig­nat­ed of­fi­cer said in cor­re­spon­dence to the man.

The man’s lawyers Shali­ni Sankar, Keron Ramkhal­wan, and An­nesia Gun­ness took is­sue with the de­lay in rec­ti­fy­ing the is­sue.

Stat­ing that there had been no con­clu­sive find­ing over the pro­vi­sion­al FUL, his lawyers said: “The state­ments are mere­ly spec­u­la­tive. Re­gard­less, the In­tend­ed Ap­pli­cant should not be de­prived of his en­ti­tle­ment to his pro­vi­sion­al li­cence due to in­ter­nal cor­rup­tion in the TTPS.”

While they ad­mit­ted that the Firearms Act does not pre­scribe a time lim­it for the com­mis­sion­er to de­cide on an FUL ap­pli­ca­tion, they sug­gest­ed that it should be done with­in a rea­son­able time and not over three years as in the man’s case.

Through the law­suit, he is seek­ing a se­ries of de­c­la­ra­tions over the de­ci­sion and an or­der com­pelling Hare­wood-Christo­pher to make a de­ci­sion with­in 21 days of the de­ter­mi­na­tion of the case.

Af­ter Grif­fith’s three-year term end­ed, the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PSC) re­tained re­tired Judge Stan­ley John to probe the is­su­ing of FULs dur­ing his and his pre­de­ces­sor Stephen Williams’ tenure be­tween 2016 and 2021.

The op­er­a­tions of the Firearm Unit were then tem­porar­i­ly sus­pend­ed due to a sep­a­rate probe and au­dit by a group of re­tired po­lice of­fi­cers com­mis­sioned by the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil (NSC) led by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

How­ev­er, High Court Judge Devin­dra Ram­per­sad par­tial­ly up­held a law­suit from Grif­fith to block the Gov­ern­ment from lay­ing the NSC re­port in Par­lia­ment.

How­ev­er, he ruled that it should on­ly be con­sid­ered by the TTPS and the PSC.

The TTPS was rep­re­sent­ed by Tenelle Hills.